E-retailers declare discount war as festive season kicks in

E-commerce companies such as Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal are forming their strategy with the festive season. They except a large set of new customers and higher visibilities.

One among the biggest online shopping websites, Flipkart, looking to be struggling for heavy traffic prompting the retailer to launch its Big Billion Day sale on Tuesday. This sale will run till 17 October.

Two of Flipkart’s close competitors, Amazon and Snapdeal, too are not far behind. Amazon is already running its own discount campaign called Great Indian Festive sale, while Snapdeal has kicked off its new bonanza special deal every Monday till Diwali.

Snapdeal on Monday claimed it was on course to reach $100 million in sales from its electronics sale on 12 October.

All three big e-retailers claim to offer the best deals to their potential customers.

An online seller of diamond jewellery, Kuberbox, had taken part in Flipkart’s Big Billion Day last year. Its founder, Sourav Lodha, said that his company experienced quite a positive momentum in sales even two after the sale had ended.

He said, “Once your product sells well on a marketplace platform, you are shown higher on their website. Even if you are selling on low margins, it helps you to get more visibility for your brand and your customer base will increase substantially.”

The co-founder of YepMe, Vivek Gaur, too agreed adding the these discount sales positively affected the businesses of the e-retailers.

“During sales on these sites consumer activity goes up. We end up selling better on partner sites and also on our own site during sales. We have set aside additional stock for these platforms. We expect four to five times of average sales on partner sites during this period, and about 40 percent additional sales on our site,” he was quoted by yourstory.com

Last year, when Flipkart announced its Big Billion Day sale, the phenomenal response to their online offer led to crashing of website. The company was forced to stop the deals after a whopping 3,00,000 orders were placed in the first six hours only.

The company also came under severe criticism on social media as users claimed that Flipkar had deliberately hiked the original price for goods for their deals to look lucrative.

Fierce competitions mean more innovations in how these retailers’ ability to reach consumers. Myntra is one classing example.

The company, which turned mobile-only this year, now facilitates a new feature whereby consumers can exchange feedback with fellow shoppers.

And not to forget the creativity in in their ad campaigns. Snapdeal’s new ad ” You don’t need a Billion offers to Amaze you. You just need to Snap the best ones” has earned plenty of plaudits on social media for its sheer creativity in both conveying its message to consumers and taking a dig at their competitors.